by Elisha Anderson, Detroit Free Press

by Elisha Anderson, Detroit Free Press

DETROIT -- He planned to go somewhere warm, like Arizona or Utah, where he would live in the woods.

He'd eat whatever he could find until he figured something out.

Michael David Elliot, 40, wore a couple of layers of white thermals underneath a blue uniform, and tore it a little bit so he could rip it off easily when he dived into the snow at the Ionia Correctional Facility on Sunday.

He also had white shoes, white gloves and a white ski mask made from thermal material when he went outside, as if he were going to exercise rather than escape.

"As soon as they turned their back a little bit, I dove in the snow and crawled to the path I had in mind," Elliot said.

It was an escape he said was less than four months in the making - a daring snowy disappearance that began Sunday night and ended the next evening more than 150 miles away in La Porte County, Ind., when he was stopped in a stolen car.

Elliot, who was convicted of four murders, is back behind bars now, awaiting extradition to Michigan, and spoke exclusively to the Detroit Free Press during his one phone call, detailing the escape.

"I just seen an opportunity," Elliot said Friday. "It was relatively simple."

First, he had to decide if he was going to attempt it, knowing that if things didn't go as planned there would be consequences.

The key to the brazen escape: blending in with the environment and getting around the obstacles that kept him behind the prison walls.

Snowy camouflage

Elliot dived into the snow, put on his mask, crawled to a fence and went under it. Then he went to an area where prisoners are transported in and out of the facility, and used a leather belt and his hands to unravel the fences so he could slip through, he recalled during the 20-minute interview.

He knew he couldn't get through the other fences, but the sally port gate presented an opportunity - it lacked the same concertina wire and electric fences.

"So I made my way to that," he said. "And that's what I went through."

When a guard drove past him, just 20 to 30 feet away, Elliot laid on his belly, burrowed into the snow and didn't move.

"Any time I seen anybody I stopped," he said.

Then he carried on in the cold with his fingers numb and sticking to the metal gate.

It took at least 30 minutes, he estimated, to escape and another hour or so to run to the city of Ionia, as he jumped in the snow every time he saw a car.

The Michigan Department of Corrections said Elliot broke through the second fence around 7 p.m Sunday and was discovered missing at 9:15 p.m. during a count of inmates.

The department stayed mum on many specifics of the escape Friday, citing the ongoing investigation it's conducting, which is expected to be completed some time next week.

The area Elliot escaped through didn't have the same security systems as other places, Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said. But the fence he got through has a sensor that is supposed to go off when you approach it.

It didn't detect Elliot as he made his way to temporary freedom.

On Friday, an officer and a shift commander working at the prison the evening Elliot escaped were suspended, Marlan said.

Meanwhile, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced Friday that state Attorney General Bill Schuette will conduct an investigation into the escape.

"We'll follow the facts to find out what happened and why," Schuette said. "We will issue a full and complete report."

Hijacked for a ride

Elliot, who got to Ionia wet and cold, said he didn't want to bother anybody and looked to see if he could find a car running, armed with a box cutter and hammer he picked up along the way.

Then he spotted a woman who was a U.S. Census worker.

"I went up to the car and I said, 'Hey move over," Elliot recalled. "She said, 'No I'm not doing anything.'"

He told her he was convicted of murder and just escaped from prison before getting in the back of her 2004 red Jeep Liberty.

"I assured her all the way there that I wasn't going to do her any harm," he said.

He wanted her to know his situation was serious and that he was inconveniencing her for one night then she would be back home with her family.

"All I wanted to do was just get away," he said.

Elliot wanted to go somewhere warm and looked in newspapers for locations before his escape, seeing Florida and Texas as options.

The woman drove to a gas station in Middlebury, Ind., and he changed into a dry pair of her cargo pants and some undergarments that she had stashed in the Jeep.

He took the keys and went inside to pay, and the woman, who had a cellphone, called 911 and then said she needed to use the restroom.

Elliot took off in her Jeep and she stayed in a locked bathroom waiting for police to arrive.

"Right as I was taking off, I seen the store clerk acting funny," he said. "And then as I'm pulling away I seen the cops come."

Second car, and arrest

He ditched the Jeep before stealing a car and was arrested in Kankakee Township trying to outrun deputies. Elliot remains in the La Porte County Jail as officials in Michigan work to bring him back to the state, a process that could take weeks.

"We're not set up to hold quadruple convicted murderers," said Capt. Michael Kellems, the La Porte County Jail Commander. "Quadruple murderers belong in maximum security prisons."

They've ramped up security while he's in custody there.

When Elliot was asked if he had any regrets or would do anything differently, he responded: "In a way, I wish I wouldn't have did it."

He still maintains his innocence in four murders that took place in Gladwin County in 1993, said he never intended to hurt anybody during his escape and hopes somebody will be willing to take another look at his murder case.

Elliot said while on the run, he walked around the same streets as schoolchildren with a box cutter in his pocket.

"If I was some kind of crazy lunatic, I'm sure I would have hurt somebody," he said.

Relief over his capture

Before Sunday's escape, Elliot had spent two decades locked up already for the murders of Vicky Currie, Michael Tufnell, Bruce Tufnell and Kathy Lane, who were killed at a home in Bentley Township, north of Midland.

Dorothy Tufnell, Michael Tufnell's mother and Bruce's aunt, sat through Elliot's trial and said there was a lot of evidence against him.

"He's certainly not innocent, I will tell you that," the 76-year-old woman said.

He had the .38-caliber gun that 10 of the 15 bullets used to kill the victims came from, she said.

It's the gun Elliot had on him when he was arrested in Saginaw days after the killings. In court documents, he said he bought it after the murders.

Tufnell said Elliot belongs in a maximum security prison, doesn't deserve a second chance and she is glad he was captured.

"With somebody like that he could have killed more people or injured them badly," she said. "Even fleeing from the police, he could have hit another car and killed people."